


and when it rains (you always find an escape)

by ThunderstormsandMemories



Series: persona rarepair week 2020 [3]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angry Kissing, F/M, First Kiss, MLM/WLW Hostility, Mediated Desire, Rivalry, Trans Akechi Goro, Trans Male Character, Unreliable Narrator, academic rivalry, but also they kiss a bit and that's solidarity babey, teenagers who are bad at recognizing and expressing their feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:48:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThunderstormsandMemories/pseuds/ThunderstormsandMemories
Summary: in which Makoto and Goro go to the same cram school, Makoto wants to prove she's a better student than him, they kiss about it, and then years later their competition is a little bit higher stakes and they kiss about that too.OR,Makoto hated the boy from cram school who knew as much as she did. His name was Goro Akechi, and he didn’t seem to care for her much either, which shouldn’t have bothered her at all.
Relationships: Akechi Goro/Niijima Makoto
Series: persona rarepair week 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2026348
Comments: 1
Kudos: 12





	and when it rains (you always find an escape)

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Persona Rarepair Week 2020 (Day 3: Childhood/Confession)
> 
> Contains: internalized misogyny, mentions of bullying (including implied homophobia)
> 
> Background references to Makoto & Ren fake dating and Goro having a one-sided (as far as he knows) crush on Ren (love an unreliable narrator and some extremely messy teenage melodrama)

Makoto hated the boy from cram school who knew as much as she did. His name was Goro Akechi, and he didn’t seem to care for her much either, which shouldn’t have bothered her at all. He didn’t seem to care for anyone, even though he had plenty of admirers: struggling students who wanted him to help with their schoolwork, girls who flocked around him because at least when he was dismissive to them he was relatively polite and not sexist about it, boys who wanted to know the secret to his popularity with the girls. She wondered why they didn’t realize that it was because he washed his hair and didn’t think that playing dumb pranks on girls was the height of both comedy and romance.

There were people who didn’t like him, of course: kids who were jealous of his grades or the attention he got, girls who were upset that he wasn’t interested in them, boys who made fun of him for—as far as Makoto could tell—paying too much attention to his appearance or not paying enough attention to girls or receiving too much attention from girls. Most people never said anything to his face, though, not that Makoto saw, probably because he never seemed to react, except to raise a disdainful eyebrow as though disappointed that their insults were so unimaginative, and the bullies preferred to spend their time on more responsive targets. He didn’t pay much attention to anyone, except in a superficial way, rewarding attempts at getting close to him with civil smiles and polite but firm rejections before turning his focus back to the material they were meant to be studying.

That shouldn’t have bothered her. She wasn’t there to make friends either, though Sae seemed to think she should be doing more of that, which privately Makoto thought was a little bit hypocritical, considering how Sae would react if Makoto did anything that didn’t further her goal of getting into the best college possible, and also considering that Sae didn’t have any friends of her own either. But there was something about how self-assured he acted about his own intelligence, like he didn’t need to befriend anyone because he was smarter than everyone else anyway, that made her want to prove him wrong. She wanted to prove, to herself as well as to him, that she was a better student than he was, and she wanted him to notice her for it.

She didn’t  _ like _ like him, obviously. Crushes were for other girls, girls with too much time on their hands and not enough focus or ambition. And it would have been stupid for her to be distracted by something as meaningless as feelings for a boy. And yet. She found herself trying to impress him. When the students who deigned to include her in their conversations asked about her grades, she found herself looking over at him, to see if he’d heard that she was at the top of her class. She almost wished he went to the same school as she did, so that they would be in direct competition and could settle the matter of their relative high grades for once and for all.

He didn’t seem to notice when she was trying to get his attention, but unless she was reading too much into things, he took to looking over at her smugly when he got a particularly difficult question right, and she retaliated by meeting his gaze with a confidant smirk of her own, to let him know that she knew the answer too, and would have answered correctly if he hadn’t stolen the opportunity from her. For a time, their interactions were limited to that: exchanging smirks across the classroom, a silent rivalry that she devoted far too much energy to fueling, even as she felt it was pushing her to do better, study harder. Wrong motivation, but she couldn’t argue with the effects. His polite smile—the one he wore like a mask, the one he used on anyone he didn’t want to talk to—was fine, she supposed, since he did have a very pretty face, but it was his smirk that she took pleasure in provoking. It was flattering that she could get him to react in a way that she’d never seen anyone else do, that must be it. That must be why her heartbeat stuttered whenever he turned that expression on her, showing his teeth with an edge of challenge, just a hint of danger.

She wanted to wipe that smug look of his face, by proving to him that not only was she a worthy opponent but that she was the person who could defeat him. She wondered if kissing him would accomplish the same thing, and then she wondered where that thought had come from. She didn’t need to kiss him, she just needed him to recognize her as an equal, a threat to the unquestioned admiration he received from teachers and fellow students alike.  _ Oh, Akechi’s very smart _ , she wanted them to say,  _ but that Niijima girl, she’s even more impressive _ . She wanted the girls who sighed when he glanced their way to realize that he didn’t care about them, and that he wasn’t worth their attention anyway, and maybe to smile and blush like that when she spoke to them.

And then he asked to walk with her to the train station one evening, and she was too startled to do anything more than nod in agreement. She couldn’t even bring herself to speak at first, in case she made a fool of herself and he decided his time was better spent elsewhere. Not that that was particularly likely, though, since she was pretty sure he’d only chosen to walk with her because everyone who went to his school had grown even more aggressive about asking him for help studying, now that the end of the semester and final exam season was approaching.

He was the one who broke the silence, asking what she thought about one of the finer points of political philosophy in the period they’d reviewed that day. There hadn’t been time to get into the nuances of the situation, but Makoto had spent half of the class writing up her own opinions on the topic in the margins of her notebook, and she was satisfied with her ability to answer his question. She wasn’t sure if he was testing her, expecting her to stumble, or if he genuinely wanted to know what she thought, but either way he nodded thoughtfully and said, “I think you might be onto something there. But have you considered…” And then he launched into his rebuttal, and she admitted that he might have a point but was still missing out on some context, and before she knew it they’d reached the station and she had to interrupt herself to say goodbye to him so that she didn’t miss her train.

They continued the debate the next day, and then every day after that they walked to the train station together. They talked about schoolwork, mostly, or anything mentioned in class that they’d gone above and beyond to research on their own. He never talked about his personal life, and she never pried, though she was burning with curiosity. She’d never felt this way about a boy, and she wanted to know what made him so different, where he came from that made him so special. But he never asked about her life either, and she was so grateful to not have to have the same conversation about her sister and her grief and the old wounds of her mother’s death and the fresh ones of her father’s that she returned the favor and never asked for information about his life that he didn’t volunteer. He didn’t volunteer much, just where he went to school and what neighborhood he lived in and that he was learning how to play chess. She learned this last tidbit when he made an elaborate chess metaphor, before coughing self-consciously and admitting that he wasn’t entirely sure he was getting it right, and she was tempted to teach herself chess just so that she could challenge him to a game and win a definitive victory. She didn’t have time for games, of course, but it was a nice daydream.

And then, on the last day of the school year, as they walked to the train station in an unseasonably chilly rainstorm, Akechi told her that he wasn’t coming back next her, something about an internship with the police, he couldn’t give too many details, confidentiality and all that, you understand, right? She barely heard what he was saying, torn between furious jealousy that he was getting a fast track to  _ her _ dream career and the horrible aching realization that she would miss him. How  _ dare _ he leave, when he was the only one she could talk to, when they hadn’t settled their ongoing rivalry?

“What about college?” she said, finally noticing that she’d been standing in silence for too long, rainwater slowly seeping into her shoes while he waited patiently for her to give some sort of response.

“What about it?” he said.

“Don’t you want to go to university?” she demanded. “Why are you paying less attention to schoolwork _now_?”

“This is more important to my career,” he said, calmly, and she hated how unaffected he sounded, with his bland polite smile pasted on his face, seemingly unbothered by either her indignation or the rain plastering down his hair. “Grades aren’t everything, you know.”

“Says the boy who’s been competing with me over grades for the entire semester,” she said. “Although I suppose if you’re not coming back, that means you forfeit and I win.”

“Absolutely not,” Akechi snapped, flicking a stray piece of hair out of his eyes. “We’re merely at an impasse. Until our paths cross again.”

“I’ll be looking forward to it,” she said. “There’s no one else who really compares to you.”

“Or you,” he said, and then, more genuinely than she’d ever heard him sound: “Thank you. I’ve enjoyed our competition.” And maybe that was why she gave into the impulse she’d been repressing for months now and leaned in to kiss him. They were the same height, which made the logistics less complicated, though the corner of his briefcase caught her in the ribs as she stepped closer and she didn’t really know what she was doing. He didn’t move for a second, his lips frozen and closed beneath hers, and she wondered if she’d made a terrible mistake, but then his mouth relaxed, and his tongue tasted like the spring rain and his hands were warm through her soaked uniform shirt and she thought,  _ so this is what all the fuss was about, I guess _ .

And then he stepped away from her, taking the warmth of his hands and his lips with him, and he said, “Oh.” And then he said, “I’m sorry.” And before she could ask what he meant he turned on his heel and walked away, disappearing into the streams of people rushing into the train station to get out of the rain.

* * *

Goro liked to remember Makoto fondly, for the most part. His feelings about her were complicated now by the twinge of jealousy he experienced and promptly ignored whenever he was reminded that as poor of a guardian as Sae might have been, she still cared for her little sister in a way that she was never going to care about him. But still. She’d been a good classmate, and the competition between them had motivated him to keep up with his studies at a time when he was finding it increasingly hard to care about that sort of thing. And she’d been the closest thing he’d had to a peer, and the first person who’d kissed him after he’d started transitioning. So that counted for something.

They’d never had any sort of future, but sometimes he caught himself, in his weakest moments as he drifted off to sleep, imagining that in a different timeline, one where he was slightly less of a ticking time bomb, they might’ve made a good couple. One of those terrifying competent couples who were practically in a four way marriage with their careers, and had every aspect of their lives planned out in each minute detail. It might have ended in flames and dramatic screaming arguments and drawn-out expensive divorce proceedings, if their stubbornness and competitive streaks got the better of them, but he thought that if he were destined for a normal, boring life, with a job and a house and a wife, she was the kind of woman he’d want to marry. To be fair, he mostly wasn’t interested in women, so it wasn’t like she had much hypothetical competition in the wife category, and he’d never had the opportunity to have even an aborted almost-kind of relationship with a guy—never allowed himself to even think about it—his subconscious didn’t have many other people to fixate on. So yes, he still thought about her sometimes, still wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t left her alone in the rain.

Not that it really mattered in any sort of big picture way, since he hadn’t expected to run into her again, aside from incredibly awkward and mercifully brief interactions with Sae there to mediate. She’d acted reserved in those quick chance meetings, as shy as she’d ever been before he’d gotten to know her a little better, and he wasn’t sure if that was because she felt as weird about the end of their acquaintance as he did, or because high school was taking its toll on her. But of course, because he couldn’t have one normal teenage experience without having it tainted by the tragicomedy that was his life, she just  _ had _ to be a member of the Phantom Thieves. And because his feelings about her weren’t messy enough, she was dating their leader, with his stupid fluffy hair and his dorky glasses and his voice that Goro couldn’t get out of his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d sounded when he argued with him from the audience at the television studio, the way he’d held Goro’s handshake for just a moment too long, his eyes flashing behind his glasses, the hint of a sharp smile on his lips, at odds with his largely unassuming appearance. Of course Makoto was dating him. He wondered if she debated Ren the way she used to debate him, if he picked holes in her arguments the way he did when he hung out with Goro, and he couldn’t tell if the jealousy burning in the pit of his stomach was directed towards him or towards her, and he didn’t know what it meant when the jealousy didn’t go away once Ren told him that he and Makoto had only been pretending to date in order to help a friend out of trouble. Maybe it was that even a pretend romance was closer to a real relationship than he was ever going to get.

Not that it mattered. At all. He wished them happiness, would have wished them luck in all of their endeavors if they would just give up on this Phantom Thief nonsense. But the months dragged on, and instead of giving up they only committed to it even more firmly, and they were all running out of time. He’d thought, at first, that if he could just warn them, convince them that what they were doing was dangerous, that there were forces at work more ruthless and more powerful than they could imagine, then they would stop. They would go back to being normal teenagers, doing whatever it was normal teenagers were supposed to do, and he could stop dreading the day he got the inevitable order that the Phantom Thieves had made themself into too much of a nuisance and needed to be taken out. But Ren was even more stubborn than Makoto, maybe even more stubborn that Goro himself, and hopelessly reckless, and worse than that, he believed in what they were doing, really believed that the world would be a worse place if they stopped. Goro wondered if he’d be convinced by the argument that the world would be even worse if he died for his doomed, naive cause.

And now he was supposed to pretend to be one of them.

He hadn’t been sure what to expect when they invited him to the school festival—both Ren and Makoto had reached out to him, and he wasn’t sure what to make of that—but once he was onstage, the spotlights blocking out the audience, Makoto’s voice steady as she picked apart his answers and asked double-edged questions for him to deflect, he realized that he was enjoying himself. And from the look on Makoto’s face, her confident smile as she laid clever verbal traps for him, he thought she was enjoying herself too.

He was enjoying himself slightly less when he was confronted by all of the Phantom Thieves, the earnestness of their whole ‘power of friendship’ and ‘saving the world one person at a time’ thing a little too overpowering in an enclosed space. He was relieved when they started to file out, and he was about to follow suit so that he could get outside, lose himself in the crowd where he could pretend that no one would notice if his carefully crafted facial expressions faltered, when Makoto said, sharply, “Wait.” So he waited, plastering his most vapid smile on his face before he turned back to face her. “We need to talk.”

“I thought we just did,” he said, “unless you mean to continue our debate from earlier, though it would hardly be the same without the audience.”

“Are you being serious right now?” she said. “You didn’t used to be this obtuse.”

“And you didn’t used to be a criminal,” he said. Neither did he, but that was hardly the point.

“That’s… how dare… I’m not a criminal,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest as if to say,  _ so there _ . “Not technically. There are no laws related to accessing the Metaverse.”

“Spoken like a lawyer’s little sister,” Goro said. “What did you want to say to me?”

“Just that I don’t trust your innocent pretty boy act,” she said, “and I’ll be watching you. You might have fooled Ren somehow, but you don’t fool me, and I’m not going to let our history get in the way of taking you down if you betray us.”

She was standing very close to him, backing him up against the doorframe, poking him in the chest to emphasize her point, and he was finding it difficult to figure out what to focus on. He was taller than her, finally, though not by much, and between the fierce set of her jaw and the steel in her voice he could see why they called her Queen.

“What do you mean, I fooled Ren?” he said, instead of addressing any of that. He didn’t think he had. For all Makoto’s posturing, she didn’t have any evidence or she would’ve acted on it by now. But Ren knew he was hiding something, and he knew Ren knew, and that was what made their games so much fun.

“He likes you,” Makoto said, like it was so simple and so obvious, and Goro laughed. Ren didn’t like him. Ren liked competing with him, and Ren was smart enough to know that you had to keep your friends close and your enemies closer. Or so Goro had always heard. He didn’t exactly have friends with which to test that theory.

“And what, you’re jealous?” he said, because it was shitty, and he was deflecting, and it was true for him so it might well be true for her too. What a mess this whole thing was, a layer of stupid teenage melodrama, the overly saccharine icing on top of a cake of corruption and tragedy.

“So that’s what you think this is about,” she said. “You think I’m still pining after you, just because we kissed one time and then didn’t speak to each other for years. And just because I went on a few platonic double dates with Ren, I must be in love with him too?”

“You  _ are _ the one who kissed me,” he said, his eyes automatically darting to her lips, “and you didn’t hear the way he talks about you, always saying that you’re so beautiful and strong and clever and special whenever your name comes up.” To be fair, Ren talked about all of his friends like that, but that didn’t make Goro feel better about it. Maybe it just meant he was a little bit into all of them, and this was just another facet of normal teenage friend groups that Goro would never understand.

“I see,” said Makoto. “You’re the jealous one. Maybe you’re the one who’s never gotten over me.” Her face was very close to his now, so close that he could feel the warmth of her breath, could see where her concealer didn’t quite cover the dark circles under her eyes. That, at least, he could sympathize with. He opened his mouth to speak, though he couldn’t quite think of what he meant to say, and she opened her mouth at the same time to interrupt him, and their eyes met, and he wasn’t sure if either of them moved first but she was kissing him and he was kissing her.

Her hair was longer than it had been back then, long enough for him to run his fingers through, and she was tugging at his hair with one hand as well, with the other pressed against his chest, and he was glad she hadn’t thought to do that last time, otherwise she might have noticed the outline of a binder under his shirt and realized what it meant and figured out something about him that he didn’t generally allow anyone to know.  _ Ren knows _ , an unhelpful corner of his brain reminded him, but that was because Ren was trans too and he’d said so first and anyway he shouldn’t have been thinking about Ren right now, with Makoto’s teeth scraping his lip and Makoto’s hand slipping between the buttons of his shirt and Makoto’s body against his, her other hand pinning his to the wall and her knee between his thighs, and he wondered if she’d ever had to kiss Ren like this as part of their pretend relationship.

She was certainly kissing him she’d had practice since their first attempt, with none of the same awkwardness and hesitation, and he was enjoying it even more than he’d enjoyed debating with her, and he closed his eyes and opened his mouth more and slid his hand down from her hair to between her shoulder blades to press her closer.

When she pulled away, releasing her hold on his now-loosened tie, smoothing down her shirt where it had been rumpled, he stumbled back, breathless, leaning against the wall for support, and said, “So…”

“Always have to have the last word, don’t you?” she said.

“Of course I do,” he said, putting a hint of teeth into his smirk. “After all, I have so much to say.”

“Hm,” she said, raising an unimpressed eyebrow, now trying to flatten down her hair where he’d had his fingers tangled in it. “I suppose I’ll see you around.” And then she turned sharply on her heel and left, and he watched her leave while he caught his breath and tried to remember why that had been a mistake. He didn’t have much success.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from When It Rains by Paramore
> 
> This is partially dedicated to my roommates for humoring me when we got to the school festival scene and I was like “oh they should absolutely kiss about this,” but mostly it’s dedicated to my high school self, for whom this would’ve been such self-indulgent wish fulfillment.
> 
> Please don't ask me exactly how the timeline of this works out because the answer is "it probably doesn't." (I set the first part toward the end of their last year of junior high and I'm pretending that that matches up to be shortly after both Makoto's father dying and Goro starting to work for Shido which happen like, roughly around the same time but not exactly but whatever! It's fine! Everything is fine and I'm definitely overthinking this!
> 
> Come find me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/selkie_au_lover) for more Makoto+Akechi rivalry content


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